Degree-Agnostic Hiring

Degree-agnostic hiring challenges the default assumption that a college degree reliably predicts job performance, spotlighting how rigid educational requirements exclude skilled candidates who learned through alternative paths. By treating degrees as a binary gate, employers miss diverse talent—self-taught professionals, bootcamp graduates, and career-switchers—who often demonstrate equal or superior real-world ability. Embracing competency-based assessments, take-home projects, and skills-focused interviews uncovers practical aptitude and reduces bias, widening the talent pool while improving hires. This approach boosts innovation, equity, and retention by valuing demonstrable capability over credentials, inviting organizations to rethink hiring criteria and discover high performers who fall outside traditional pipelines.